Germany’s Double Standard in War Crimes Trials

by John Rosenthal
Last week, a German court in Munich found the 90-year-old former Wehrmacht officer Josef Scheungraber guilty on ten charges of murder for his role in a massacre of Italian civilians in the town of Falzano di Cortona in June 1944 during the Second World War.*
The case has invited comparisons to that of John Demjanjuk: the 89-year-old former Ohio resident who was expelled to Germany earlier this year. Demjanjuk is facing charges in the same Munich court on nearly 28,000 counts of murder in connection with his alleged activity as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. As discussed in my earlier PJM report here, Germany’s avid pursuit of Demjanjuk creates the impression that German authorities are vigilant about prosecuting Nazi war crimes. Especially in light of the defendant’s similarly advanced age, the conviction of Josef Scheungraber reinforces this impression.
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